12/06/2009

Unecological Ecologists

When the rule of law happens, capitalism happens derivatively. Illegitimate interference occurs and the rule of law as well as capitalism are suspended to a larger or lesser extent, when decisions are enforced that do not accord with generally applicable principles. The more man governs, i.e. lets himself be governed by men, the more out of time he reveals himself to be. Civilisation consists of rules, not of commands.

Of course, the search for principles of general applicability is fraught with error. But errors related to that attempt are of a different kind altogether than constant action wholly unguided by even the faintest consideration of general applicability; i.e genuine rules rather than ephemeral "solutions" by opportune jerk and twitch.

The search for general applicability or universalisability is pivotal, for it is the search for the grown order into which our ambitious but subordinate impulses of understanding the greater scheme must fit, so that both can enjoy healthy growth - the lesser and dispensable part: namely, the individual (intellect), and the grand order that admits or ousts the ambitions of the human mind.

The fundamental problem of our presently dominant political philosophy and its institutions and practices is faithfully reflected in the incoherence that disrupts the "ecological" movement at its base: a complete lack of insight into ecology. Politically correct ecologists like other believers in and exploiters of our present political model are essentially adherents of the creed of central planning, of problems and solutions the size of our mind, when we could never have emerged as a civilisation, if problems and solutions only of the size of our mind had been admitted to the game of emergence.

They do not understand that we are part of a grown order immeasurably vaster than anything we can conceive, design or manage of our own accord. Original (classical) liberalism discovered this as being the fundamental condition of civilisation. Liberty, in all its facets (law, markets, political institutions etc), is an attempt to judiciously adapt to, rather than create, that vaster order.

Governments' attempts to manipulate Earth's temperature now
comprise one of the world's largest industries. Tens of billions of
dollars are being dispensed, as by the U.S. Energy Department, which
has suddenly become, in effect, a huge venture capital operation,
speculating in green technologies. Political, commercial, academic and
journalistic prestige and advancement can be contingent on not
disrupting the (postulated) consensus that is propelling the gigantic
and fabulously lucrative industry of combating global warming.